Craving

We were an addiction.
It started with a spark,
I wanted to breathe you in deeper,
and you made me numb.
You opened my eyes,
and I watched everything from a different perspective,
and for a moment,
you made my life feel euphoric.
You were a needle,
and you pierced right through me,
letting you flow through my veins,
because you gave me a rush that left my whole body tingling.
I was a junkie for you,
and I craved the high you gave me.
But then you'd leave again.
And I was stuck with feeling this pain,
cause I craved you,
but you didn't know you were my happy little pill.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”